AIDS OF THE NEWTONIAN PERIOD. 287 



not have attained. No step perhaps tended more 

 to this than his bringing the celebrated Dominic 

 Cassini to Paris. This Italian astronomer (for he 

 was born at Permaldo, in the county of Nice, and 

 was professor at Bologna,) was already in possession 

 of a brilliant reputation, when the French ambas- 

 sador, in the name of his sovereign, applied to Pope 

 Clement the Ninth, and to the senate of Bologna, 

 that he should be allowed to remove to Paris. The 

 request was granted only so far as an absence of six 

 years ; but at the end of that time, the benefits and 

 honours which the king had conferred upon him, 

 fixed him in France. The impulse which his arrival 

 (in 1669,) and his residence gave to astronomy, 

 showed the wisdom of the measure. In the same 

 spirit, the French government drew to Paris Homer 

 from Denmark, Huyghens from Holland, and gave 

 a pension to Hevelius, and a large sum when his 

 observatory at Dantzic had been destroyed by fire 

 in 1679. 



When the sovereigns of Prussia and Russia were 

 exerting themselves to encourage the sciences in 

 their countries, they followed the same course 

 which had been so successful in France. Thus, as 

 we have said, the Czar Peter took Delisle to Pe- 

 tersburg in 1725; the celebrated Frederick the 

 Great drew to Berlin, Voltaire and Maupertuis, 

 Euler and Lagrange; and the Empress Catharine 

 obtained in the same way Euler, two of the Ber- 

 uoullis, and other mathematicians. In none of these 



